Traditionally, an organization, such as a company, contains various department and systems that track and maintain employee-related information, such as benefits and the like. More recently, intranet technology has given employees the ability to access such information directly from their desktops. An intranet, typically, is a network based on transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) that is accessible only to an organization's members, employees, or others with authorization. An intranet's Web sites look and act just like any other Web sites and are used to share information via pages containing hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) links to other pages.
One of the benefits of Intranets and other Web-based technology is that employees no longer have to learn how to user different computer programs to access different types of information—a single, commonly understood protocol could instead be used.